Hacked In
by Cherry474
Summary: Shadow gets hacked into the first Sonic game, much to his dismay. Rated for mild language. Side project, so won't be as high-quality as my other works.
1. Green Hill Zone Act One

**Welcome to Hacked In. Rather than a serious project, this is a little side deal only for this site that I'll work on in my spare time. As such, its quality is bound to be worse than any of my future projects.**

**Enjoy!**

Chapter 1 – Green Hill Act One

The change was sudden. One minute, Shadow had been relaxing quietly with only his thoughts for company, and the next, he was standing on a carpet of green grass, a pristine blue ocean behind him, and a sunflower that was taller than he was in front of him. There were palm trees just to his left, and apparently nothing to his right.

"What the hell?" the black and red hedgehog muttered, looking around. "Where am I?"

"Uh-oh…" he heard a voice say somewhere nearby. He looked all around, but all he could determine was that either the speaker was invisible, or a voice inside his head. But at least he knew the voice.

"Sonic? Where are you?"

"Sort of in a pocket dimension. You pushed me into it by taking my place."

"What do you mean?" Shadow demanded, folding his arms and tapping his foot. …Wait a minute – wasn't that _Sonic's_ mannerism? Why was _he_ doing it!?

"You've been hacked into my very first game!"

"…Hacked in?" His mind was spinning. "Haven't some people done that already? What was it called, Megamix?"

"Well, yeah, but this is a straight-up hack, it looks like. All the hacker did was change the animation so you skate instead of run. Probably used the Megamix sprites, come to think of it. …Oh, cool! I'm looking at the source code!"

"You are!? Can you get me out of here and put yourself back in?"

"Hmm… Nope, no can do, buddy. Looks like your sprites completely replaced mine in the code. Good luck! Hope the Player's skilled!"

"Wha…!? Hmph, you're useless!"

And then he began to run. Er…skate. He was surprised at how quickly he got up to speed, it took at least half the time it took him in any of his other incarnations. He leapt through a set of three rings, and over a strange-looking crablike robot, then came to a bridge that seemed to be connected to the two cliff edges by sheer surface tension. Apparently, the Player thought the same because he jumped for the rings, bouncing off a pirahna robot to land on the other side and collect some more rings.

"This place is pretty peaceful…" he said. "It only seems to exist for collecting rings."

"Well, duh," said Sonic. "It was the first stage ever. Not everything revolves around _your_ angst, buddy."

"We're not buddies…" Shadow growled as he skated up an incline. "And why doesn't the Player spindash?"

"That doesn't exist yet."

"_What!?"_ Shadow couldn't believe it. There had been a point in time when the spindash wasn't available. "That's insane!"

"That's _classic_," countered Sonic. "The Player's got some nice moves," he added as Shadow bounced off two Crabmeats in succession. He came to a yellow spring, and the Player ignored it entirely, jumping instead to the ledge nearby. It crumbled behind him, and, rather than land on the ground below, seemed to fall _through _it, into nothingness.

"Weird…"

"It's sixteen-bit," said Sonic. "That means, conventional physics be damned! Well, whatever conventional physics we follow in the first place…"

"Hmm…"

Two more crumbling ledges later, he came to his first Star Post. It was nothing special, just a thin metal post with a blue orb on top that turned red as he tagged it.

"It doesn't even have a _star_ on it!" Shadow exclaimed as he rushed beyond it, only to kill a Newtron enemy and rush back to the post, where he saw some floating platforms. "And…why are there moving sections of land here?"

"Classic. Platformer," Sonic told him, apparently bored.

The Player missed the first jump and so Shadow had to try again, wondering why he made that odd sound whenever he jumped. Apparently, the Player _really_ wanted ten rings, because the only things up there at the top were a lone Buzzbomber and a Ring Box, both of which he destroyed in one jump. Beyond that, there were more Buzzbombers, more floating platforms, and a shield on top of a loop.

"Shields were blue?" Shadow wondered aloud as he dropped off the left edge to go through the loop he had just been standing on. The movement was smoother than he expected, he was used to clipping his shins on the edges of loops. But since he was now moving in 2D, there was no edge to speak of.

"Yep…" said Sonic, sounding like he was ready to go to sleep.

Shadow ran across some mostly-flat terrain, and then saw he was nearing a tunnel of some sort, one that was too narrow for him to go through! And there was no spindashing!

"Um…does the Player know what he's doing?" Shadow said as he neared the tunnel.

And then he was in ball-form, being pushed down the S-shaped tunnel like there was wind at his back. He tagged another Star Post, still in ball-form, and went through _another_ tunnel before being propelled off an incline as if it were a ramp.

"Hey! I thought there was no spindashing!" he said. Sonic had tricked him, that little-.

"There _isn't_. That doesn't mean there's no ball-form. Tch, what, you thought I was just _running_ all the time?"

"Um…" Shadow had never considered a ground-based ball-form could be separate from a spindash. He couldn't remember ever having to do it, himself…Until now, at least.

And then he saw them (how he could see anything in ball-form was beyond him). There were at least fifteen rings up there, and he was heading right towards them! He cheered as he soared through them, past startled Buzzbombers, and over a bridge, where he landed on another Ring Box, keeping airborne.

Dare he admit it? He was _having fun_!

And then he landed, right in front of a sign that had, inexplicably, Eggman's face on it.

"Um, what's up with the Eggman sign?" he asked.

"This early, his name is Robotnik," said Sonic. "And it's the end of the Act. Good job, Shadow. …Oh, wait! Special Stage! Go for it!"

"What?" But before he could receive an answer, the Player had already guided him into the giant golden ring above the sign, which had spun to reveal his own face.

**Shadow has cleared Act 1!**

**Sorry there wasn't much to write about. Green Hill isn't all that interesting, is it? :P**


	2. Green Hill Zone Act Two

**Thanks for the awesome turnout, everyone! I honestly didn't expect the first chapter to be received so well!**

**I'm actually using the real stage layouts to write these, so it might get tedious.**

**Anyway, first things first, Shadow **_**did**_** enter the giant ring…**

Special Stage One –

He had been unaware of curling into ball-form between the strange fade to white and the fade-in. The first thing he realized was that he was rolling around in a maze of some sort. The next was that it was a rotating maze, with brightly-colored blocks, red-and-white bumpers, and other things acting as the floor. He fell a short distance as the floor became the wall, through some rings, and onto the new, already-tilting floor.

The fact that he was slowly-rolling in an environment that was rotating itself, plus the sickeningly-bright and ever-changing backdrop he was against – it cycled between birds, fish, and one other image he couldn't identify – was just too much for Shadow, accustomed to his own title's darker environs. He was mind-numbingly dizzy, and completely lacking any sense of direction.

It really didn't help that the direction of the rotation seemed to change at random as the Player moved him through the maze. Shadow figured he must be doing it, somehow or that it was otherwise Player-controlled, but it only added to his disorientation, and he was afraid to try and ask Sonic anything, afraid he'd vomit if he opened his mouth.

The Player kept him against a pair of bumpers as the maze rotated him towards a flashing set of spheres marked "GOAL"; Shadow suspected they were the exit, and, despite there being a Chaos Emerald in the maze somewhere, he sort of _wanted_ the Player to screw up.

But he did no such thing, and Shadow successfully dropped into the next chamber via a set of transparent bumpers that became corporeal as he passed through them.

Right there, there were blocks that were shaped differently, more like diamonds, and spinning. When he hit them, they changed color, though Shadow didn't realize this at first, the background and spinning and keeping his stomach firmly in place took priority.

The maze rotated, and the Player took him through several jumps to keep him against the blocks. They began to disappear, and then Shadow fell through, and, through his dizziness, he felt a familiar power.

_Chaos…_ The familiarity comforted him in this fish-out-of-water experience as the world around him faded to white and he uncurled and gently floated to a standing position, cradling the blue-purple Emerald as it vanished into whatever personal pocket dimension they kept themselves in.

Green Hill Act Two –

Shadow blinked as Green Hill came into view. He had double-vision, and the stage seemed to waver in a fashion not unlike the fuzzy-induced mutations experienced by a certain famed plumber's saurian steed. It was a wonder he was still standing, and he felt like he _should_ collapse. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest.

"You okay there, buddy?"

"_Where were you!?"_ _He_ felt pathetic, but his words still managed to express his anger. "…I would've appreciated a little explanation!"

"I would've said something, but the Player seemed to be handling it so well. Sorry."

Shadow growled, closing his eyes in an attempt to make the Zone stop moving around him. It didn't work, and it was _worse_ when he opened them again.

"Super Shadow better be _really_ broken for this sort of trouble…"

"Um…"

"_What?"_ Shadow snarled. He _really_ wasn't in the mood for bad news. Too bad for him he was about to get some.

As the Player began guiding him through the still-wavering stage, causing him to leap into the air and destroy a piranha on another of those weird bridges (made even weirder by his double-vision), Sonic reluctantly gave him the worst possible piece of information he had heard since being hacked in.

"…This was before Chaos Form, too." There was a cringing tone to Sonic's voice; he _knew_ Shadow didn't want to hear it.

"_What!?_ That-…whoa!" The Player had inadvertently cut him off by making him leap over a bed of spikes and _off a cliff_, in a much longer fall than his stomach was ready for. Thankfully, it wasn't in his sprite capacity to actually vomit, so he didn't, landing without harm (in the game's own definition of "harm", that is) on a Ring Box, with one more box and a Shield beside it.

The initial bounce nearly catapulted the dizzy hedgehog into _another_ spike bed, prompting a disbelieving "Whoa, close!" from Sonic that, for some reason beyond all logic, aggravated Shadow even more.

The end of the first Act was fun, he'd admit to that. But the Special Stage had ruined whatever glimmer of hope he'd managed to capture in actually enjoying this experience.

_And it was all for nothing!_ "Sonic, what the _hell_ am I collecting Chaos Emeralds for if there's no Chaos Form?" he demanded.

"Um, I don't remember," said Sonic as Shadow collected the shield and plowed through a breakable wall in ball-form. "I think it tacked something onto the ending? It's been a long time. Don't worry, you'll be fine."

"Fine?" said Shadow sarcastically as he broke through a Speed box. The effect amplified his dizziness, so the Zone appeared even more warped. So he felt quite justified in his argument as he blew past terrain he didn't have more than a second's thought to interpret. Something involving a swinging platform. Or something like that. "I'm seeing double! Yes, I'm perfectly 'fine'."

And then there was a loop to go through. The tiniest of whimpers escaped him as he was suddenly both dizzy _and_ upside-down, and then down the other side and bouncing off of two Buzzbombers (_not _fun while dizzy!), a piranha, and down an S-curve tunnel.

"You'll get used to them, Shadow."

Rolling down the tunnel hadn't helped matters, and, while his double-vision was beginning to clear, the Zone still refused to stop moving before his eyes.

Thankfully, the goalpost was right there after it, and he rolled past it and offscreen.

"Aw, he missed this Act," Sonic lamented, while Shadow said, at the same time, "Good, he missed it."

If they could see each other, they would have exchanged glares.

"It's not that bad, Shadow, really," said Sonic, sounding annoyed. "Oh, well, he didn't collect enough rings, anyway. Man, he was _running_ it! Only twenty one seconds!"

"Ugh… That's it, I want out of this game."

**Shadow has cleared Act 2!**

**The Special Stages in Sonic 1 really do make me dizzy. But not **_**that**_** dizzy. Poor Shadow…**


End file.
